One of the Last 3-Card Monte Dealers Declares Game Over

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am Sylvester the eye-tester!” a man whose real name is Andrew Jones bellowed in an outdoor plaza in the Bronx last week. “For all of you who have not had your eyes tested in the last year or so, I am here for you!”

Mr. Jones has lived most of his 57 years in the New York borough, and it was there at age 15 that he discovered a game and began creating his own version, his own patter and his own characters.

Now, decades later, the one-liners still come quickly, drawn from a bottomless bag.

“I have two blacks and one red, like you have two eyes and one head!” he shouted to a passer-by last week in the plaza on East Fordham Road. The passer-by kept passing by, but Mr. Jones continued like a bygone wanderer who had just stumbled out of a time machine.

“Three-card monte is the name! Played in New York, but originated in Spain!”

It was the name of the game all over the city in decades past, and while it has all but disappeared from the streets, for Mr. Jones, it is still the game. He prefers Bee brand playing cards — “That’s what I learned with” — and he plays with either a queen of diamonds or a queen of hearts — both are red — and two black cards, challenging all comers to pick out the red one off the top of his cardboard box after some sleight of hand.

“Help us stop crack! Find the red, not the black,” he shouted.

His favorite places to play are evident from his rap sheet, with many arrests over 35-plus years here on East Fordham Road, a busy thoroughfare of shops and street vendors.

But his most recent arrest, far from the Bronx, on West 16th Street in Chelsea, reflected a change in his strategy. He was apprehended on a block of nightclubs popular with the young and well-to-do. His move showed hubris, but also great opportunity: In Chelsea, this weathered, middle-aged man with his cardboard-box table and his cards and his patter was a curiosity.

After writing about the Oct. 2 arrest, I visited the Bronx and found several men who knew him, including fellow monte players. They tracked him down and he agreed to meet with me. I brought a deck of cards, and he demonstrated his routine with two jokers and a red queen.

Street life has been hard on Mr. Jones, but he was literally and figuratively quick on his feet on Wednesday, chasing cards caught by the wind while telling a Dickensian tale of his early years.

“I practiced everywhere I could,” he said of three-card monte. “I practiced at home. I practiced at school. I practiced at the Boys’ Club. I practiced at the P.A.L.” — the Police Athletic League and its youth programs. He challenged other children: “‘Bet your bus pass. Bet your lunch ticket.’”

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Mr. Jones, showing a three-card monte trick in the Bronx, said he went to the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan to play because of the audience there. “The majority of the people down there have money,” he said.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

The police said he was first charged with running a monte game, which is a violation of the city’s administrative code, in 1981. Mr. Jones said that was untrue — it was more like 1978.

The police said his record showed 17 arrests involving three-card monte. “That may be an understatement,” Mr. Jones said. But the arrests never deterred him. Why?

“The camaraderie, the fanfare,” he said. “Definitely not for the money.”

One joke in his patter — “Help us stop crack” — is more like a wish. Frequently during his arrests, officers have found crack cocaine and a pipe, the police said. “It’s something that I struggle with,” Mr. Jones said.

He knew Chelsea a little, and arrived the night of his recent arrest ready to play. “The majority of the people down there have money,” he said, rubbing his fingers together. “The crowd was, for what I came to do, perfect.”

People are drawn by greed, Mr. Jones said. “The only people who cannot lose at this game are honest people,” he said. “People with larceny in their hearts will stop and entertain the game.”

Mr. Jones had rolled out his usual spiel to reel in players — “Anybody but a broke body, any soul but a shoe sole” — and had dealt and won a few hands before he was interrupted. “I felt a tapping on my shoulder,” he said. “The boys in blue.”

The police officers who found him said he was likely to be given a summons, he said, but a sergeant arrived with other ideas. “This guy took the box, he took the cards, he took the tray and he took me,” Mr. Jones said.

His court-appointed lawyer was not encouraging. “She said, ‘Your record is atrocious,’” Mr. Jones recalled. But she asked the judge to release him in return for a guilty plea, and the judge did.

Despite the happy outcome, the episode gave him pause. He said he realized he was among the last of the monte dealers, and the youth of today doesn’t “for some reason, have the same interests.” But he said he had no intention of actually being the last.

“I’m not going to continue to play,” Mr. Jones said.

With that, we shook hands and parted ways, each in a hurry to get out of the cold, and so it was probably the result of oversight that when I later opened the deck of cards, it was missing those two jokers and the queen.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: One of the Last Monte Dealers, After Another Arrest, Quits the Game. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe